THE MEIGAS IN THE FUNCTION OF THE VOTE

For some years and until the infamous arrival at the City Council of the tide, which suppressed it, the Meigas, have had the high honor of participating in the traditional Voting Function which, in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, Patroness of La Coruña, is celebrated on the Sunday closest to May 8. That day, the Municipal Corporation presided by the Mayor and headed by the City Banner, escorted by the Municipal Police with their period uniforms corresponding to the Urban Militia (1763) and the Urban Militia (1808), with the Historical Flags of the Alarms and the Militia, Maceros, Heraldos, Timbaleros and Clarineros, go, in colorful retinue, to the Convent of Santo Domingo to renew the Vow that the city made to its patron in 1589 on the occasion of the siege of the British Army and Navy. command of Admiral Drake.

The Mayor with the Mayor Meiga and the Senior Meiga in the Function of Voting [/ caption]

This is an official act of the city attended by the first civil and military authorities of La Coruña and to which every year there are many Coruñeses remembering that historic date. For many years, the function of the Vow was part of the program of the Festivities of Maria Pita, celebrating the first Sunday of August in the church of San Jorge, passing, later, to Santo Domingo to be this temple the custodian of the Patroness. Being Francisco Vázquez Mayor of La Coruña, he agreed that this celebration should be moved to the Sunday closest to May 8, the date on which it is currently celebrated.

It was on May 8 of that year of 1589 when a group of Cofrades del Rosario prayed to the Virgin to mediate, preventing the city from falling into the hands of the invader. In that first Vow, the confreres, made a solemn promise before God, in the name of the whole city and its inhabitants, that every July 2, feast of Our Lady of the Visitation – the Octave of St. John, they would celebrate vespers and sacrifices, they would confess and receive communion, realizing, on the day that the siege was released or at the most the next, a general procession of disciplinarians.

Finally, in response to this plea, the siege was lifted and the English fleet, without achieving its objective, left the city after some hard combats in which the heroin Major stood out. Fernández de la Cámara and Pita, the popular María Pita, which since then represents the courage and bravery of the Coruña woman.

For centuries, with some exceptions always motivated by identical reasons, the Vow has been renewed annually, Mayor after Mayor, reaching to our days although, as has been said, with the arrival to the City Council of sectarians, resentful and incompetent of the tide, that black tide that, since 2016, has polluted La Coruña, has stopped celebrating in the eagerness of these dictators to burden themselves with everything related to the history and traditions of our city, the soul of La Coruña.

The Vow is, above all other significations, the memory and the evocation of a historical event that marked the future of the city and its people; a fact that showed that desire for freedom of the Coruñeses who, along with the Army, knew how to defend our walls or what is the same, their houses and their property, even to lose their lives, thus avoiding falling into the hands of the invader .

The Voto, as in other Spanish cities, is part of that intangible heritage that, thanks to the evolution of history, hoards towns and cities forming part of its inveterate tradition that the Authorities have the sacred obligation to conserve, like it or not, believe or not believe, since it is not something that belongs to them, it is a good of the whole city and of those who live in it and even of those who have lived though no longer with us and those who will live in the future.

Therefore, for the Meigas it has been a high honor to attend this event every time the Mayor has invited them to do so, aware that they were heirs of those other Coruñeses of 1589 and depositaries of a tradition that at all costs must be preserved.

It is not, therefore, evoking an excessive desire for an absurd secularism, to make disappear something that is part of the history written by others, written by blood and fire by others who believed that the best way to defend the city was to face the walls, even at the risk of losing their lives, or turning their faces to the image of the Virgin to mediate for their protection; it is about ensuring the traditions and their continuity since no one is legitimized to make them disappear.

The Meigas have had the honor, some wearing the Spanish Mantilla and others the Regional Costume of Galicia, to join that multicolored procession that runs every May through the streets of the City Old A Coruña have had the honor of prostrating themselves before the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, Patroness of the city, to beg you to continue protecting us all, even those who, for obscure reasons, want to make this act disappear and, on some occasions, Meiga Mayor and the Mayor Meiga Infantil have accompanied the Mayor to deposit before the monument to María Pita, a paradigm of courage and Coruñian heroism, a laurel wreath.

It is one more way that the Meigas identify with the history of their city, that they know difficult trances lived by their ancestors in other distant moments and that they pay tribute of respect and I remember those who, with all generosity, knew how to give their lives defending La Coruña and its people.

This year, again, following an invitation from the Royal Confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Meigas will attend, next Sunday, in the convent church of Santo Domingo, at traditional function of the vote and we are sure that, come the next day 26, when we throw from the City Council these incompetent sectarians, and return to govern us normal people, lovers of La Coruña, its history and its traditions, respectful of freedom, the Voting Function will once again represent a milestone in the life of the city, recovering the splendor that corresponds to it. Then, again, the Meigas will be there, as they have always been, to remember a memorable feat that, in a distant 1589, led Coruñeses, men and women, without distinction of class, who knew how to defend the city against the invader. p>

José Eugenio Fernández Barallobre.